Design of a Motorcycle Triple Clamp Optimised for Stiffness and Damping

Engineers have always faced the challenge of solving conflicting objectives such as high stiffness combined with high damping. Structurally optimised components are used, especially by pushing lightweight construction. This design adaptation of component mass and stiffness generally has a negative effect on the dynamic component properties, as both the natural frequencies are shifted and component damping is reduced. In the majority of applications, the resulting vibrations are undesirable and must be reduced by suitable mechanisms. For example, vibrations in the vehicle can lead to a reduction in driving comfort or to a reduced service life.One approach to solving conflicting objectives is the targeted integration of effects into components through additive manufacturing. In this paper, the effect-engineering on a laser beam melted motorcycle triple clamp is illustrated. The triple clamp is a highly dynamically loaded structural component where unwanted vibrations occur due to road unevenness, leading to critical hand-arm vibrations. This paper focuses on the simulative design of the triple clamp. The triple clamp is topology-optimised and extended by the effect of particle damping, so that the component is optimised in terms of stiffness, damping and mass. The optimisation also makes it possible to achieve a high degree of functional integration by saving 20 components. The effect of particle damping is experimentally evaluated by preliminary studies, which show that component damping can be increased by up to a factor of 20. The laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) makes it possible to store unmelted powder in the interior of the component in a targeted manner and thus produce particle-damped structures inside the triple clamp.